“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, so dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” – D.H. Lawrence

Although Circling the Sun begins with the transatlantic solo flight of female pilot Beryl Markham, the title does not refer to her flying exploits. Instead, “the sun” is Denys Finch Hatton, the lover that Beryl shared with her good female friend Karen Blixen, names familiar to those who know Out of Africa. Shortly into the flight, a lightning bolt over the icy North Atlantic sends Beryl’s memory back to her earliest home.

With her older brother Dickie, mother Clara and father Charles Clutterbuck, Beryl arrived in British East African Protectorate (later known as Kenya) in 1904. Her father had sold their family home in England to purchase 1,500 acres of farmland in the bush. Charles knew nothing of farming, since he was a horseman. After two years of utter misery, Clara took Dickie and left Kenya, promising 4-year-old Beryl a box of candy from Piccadilly. Although Clara kept that promise, Beryl would not see her mother again for almost two decades.

Charles was not an emotionally demonstrable man. There is no doubt he loved his daughter, but he simply could not answer her questions about when or if her mother and Dickie were coming back. So, little Beryl was adrift. Luckily for her, the Kipsigis families who lived in the forest on Clutterbuck’s land sensed her desolation and adopted her into their tribe, naming her Lakwet or very little girl. One wonders what their conversations within their camps must have been about this white woman who abandoned her child, an unthinkable act in their own culture.

Thus began my favorite part of this book, when Lakwet is soaking up the Kips’ love and guidance, learning their customs as well as the Swahili language, and forming what would be a life-long friendship with Kibii, son of the head warrior Maina. Although Kip females were strictly domestic, Lakwet was allowed to train along with Kibii, learning to throw a spear, to track and hunt, fashion and use a bow and arrow. Perhaps the Kip instinctively knew this child would need to fend for herself throughout her lifetime and they wanted to prepare her. She was also learning horse training from her father who had established himself as a reputable breeder and trainer.

When Beryl was 11, her father hired a “housekeeper” to look after the household duties and act as governess to his daughter. It wasn’t long until Beryl sensed that Mrs. Orchardson was acting more like Charles’ wife than a housekeeper. Not knowing quite how to share her home or her father with another creature, Beryl decided the best strategy would be to follow and track her movements and learn the best way to defeat her, akin to tracking. After a few months, Mrs. Orchardson gave up trying to teach Beryl and a series of tutors were hired, none of which survived Lakwet’s tactics of dead snakes in their beds or other such warning signs. Mrs. Orchardson, however, refused to relinquish her “housekeeper” position and her hold on Charles Clutterbuck tightened with each passing day.

Having defeated the string of tutors, Lakwet was feeling proud and victorious. Her father took her on a train trip that combined business and a visit with old friends, the Elkingtons. She reveled in her alone time with him while he regaled her with Greek myths, poetry and helpful hints on how to deal with wild beasts. After settling business in Nairobi, they went on to Kabete to visit the Elkingtons who had a pet lion named Paddy which was allowed to roam their home and their land. While the grownups enjoyed their beverages on the veranda, Beryl ran out to enjoy and explore the grounds, at which time she encountered Paddy. He bit her from calf to mid thigh and was taking seconds when Bishon Singh, her father’s horse groom, along with six or seven of the Elkington grooms, came to her rescue.

Beryl’s recovery process was long but rather luxurious, other than some pain. For six weeks, Mrs. Elkington waited on her hand and foot, bringing her an endless supply of luscious food and treats. When she finally was able to return home to Njoro, she regaled Kibii and other Kip boys with the story of her lion encounter. They were suitably impressed and envious. But in the retelling of her encounter and recovery, Beryl realized something more important than having a foot up on her Kip friends – a terrible thing had happened to her and she had survived. She felt invincible and confident that she could handle anything that came her way in life.

It wasn’t long before the next challenge presented itself. Her father and Mrs. Orchardson (“Mrs. O”) decided she must go to school in Nairobi and learn to be a lady. After two and half years, she was discharged from the school. World War I was in full bloom and in Africa that meant the English had their hands full fighting off German encroachment onto their territories. Everything changed. Everyone’s horses were taken for the war effort and most of the workers went off to fight and defend the King.

One of the most important relationships of Beryl’s adult life was made at that school in Nairobi when she met Doris (Dos) Waterson. Not only did she learn from Dos that Mrs. O was still married but that Mr. Orchardson, an anthropologist, had fallen in love with a Nandi woman and gotten her pregnant. Beryl was still unsure of her own parents’ marital status, so now she was seeing that in the world’s eye, the adults in her home had not only been humiliated by their respective spouses but were now themselves living in an unmarried state. Scandalous was now added to her vocabulary. Her first lesson of the adult world.

Eventually, Beryl was given a coming out party on her sixteenth birthday. She met Denys Finch Hatton briefly while taking a smoke break. He and another young man she was chatting with were quoting poetry to each other. Her heart was not won by anyone at that party, but it shortly became clear that the purpose of the party was to get Beryl out of the house. Her father had taken a job in Cape Town and would be leaving with Mrs. O. Reluctantly, she became the bride of Jock Purves, a new farmer to the area, a man almost twice her age. The marriage was a disaster and Beryl left even though Jock refused her request for a divorce.

The adult phase of Beryl’s life was filled with ups and downs. She was Lakwet in her spirit and heart, but in reality she had no money and few resources. Jock refused the divorce for years. In the meantime, she depended on friends’ hospitality and her horse training skills to get by. Eventually after her second marriage she even found herself involved in a scandal involving two British princes.

During her horse training years after she left Jock, she met Karen Blixen for the first time and Denys Finch Hatton again.

Her affair with Denys spanned several years, with long periods of separation. When Karen was visiting her mother in Denmark and Denys was living at her farm, he would not see Beryl at Karen’s house, but in the cottage down the road. Both claimed to and perhaps did love Karen. However, when Karen finally relented and gave her husband the divorce he wanted, Denys refused to marry her.

As I was reading the last two-thirds of the book, the adult phase, I found myself not liking most of these people, including Beryl, but was still fascinated by them. She wanted to be independent, but the structure of society and her own financial condition did not allow for that. Her marriages and all her relationships with men, except Denys, were based on financial need. Despite her efforts to be her own woman, she was defeated at every turn. Horse training jobs would be pulled at the last moment and the horses given to another trainer who would get credit for the derby win. She learned to fly because she loved it but also because she felt she would be able to earn a living from it, as she did for a number of years. She wrote a memoir, West with the Night (the Collier County Public Library has it) in 1942, which sold a modest amount of copies. Ernest Hemingway called it “…a bloody wonderful book.” Later, it was republished in time to lift Beryl out of a life of poverty for the final few years of her life.

She was indomitable. She may have had financial difficulties periodically, but her life was never dull. She was adopted by the Kipsigis as a four-year-old, bitten by a lion at age 12, in her 20s was dining with British royalty, and in her 30s was flying a record making transatlantic solo flight.

Circling the Sun is a beautifully written book with interesting characters. McLain’s admiration for her subject shines through on every page. Her descriptions of the land, the native people, the animals, dangers and beauty of the bush are so vivid that I could see every scene in my mind. I was casting the movie as I went along (which is my personal mark of excellence), along with the fact that days after I finished the book I was still thinking about the characters. Rating: 4.25/5.0. Available 07/28/2015, at the Collier County Public Library.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher, as well as various occupations in the healthcare field. She shares a hometown, Springfield, Illinois, with Abraham Lincoln, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, reading, movies and writing are among her favorite activities. She is self-employed and works from her Naples home. Contact her at winetaster13@gmail.com or maggiesbookinblog.com.

All American kids learn about the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk in very early grade school. We think we know them and their importance to aviation. Turns out we know nothing.

David McCullough brings Wilbur and Orville to life in his inimitable style, fleshing out the rather stern looking men in the old black-and-white photographs. This biography gripped me within the first few pages as firmly as the last political thriller I read. It was hard to put it down.

The boys apparently inherited their mechanical prowess from their mother, Susan Koerner Wright, the daughter of a German wagon maker, who constantly encouraged her sons’ curiosity and saved everything the boys tried to make, putting each “invention” on a shelf in the kitchen. She realized they had something special. Apparently so did she, as she was said to able to make old toys or odd scraps into better than new. She was also her husband’s intellectual equal and their household included one library of theology books and another comprised of novels and books on every conceivable subject. Susan tragically succumbed to tuberculosis in 1889 on the Fourth of July. The Wrights never again celebrated that holiday.

Their father Milton Wright was a minister in the United Brethren Church in Christ, achieved the position of bishop. He joined this church as a young man largely because of its stances against slavery, alcohol and freemasonry/secret societies. In the early 1880s, a liberal movement within the church was eating away at some of these policies, especially the policy against joining secret societies. Bishop Wright had been an itinerant minister his entire career, but sensed that this dissension within the church was coming to a head and he wanted to be in the middle of it. Hence, he decided to move the family to Dayton, Ohio. At that point, they had lived in 12 different places.

In Dayton, Orville was born in 1871 and three years later, Katharine came along, giving Orville a baby sister on his third birthday. (The two would share not just a birthday but a very close bond that would remain unbroken, although severely strained later in their lives.) The Wright family was now complete, with three older sons, Reuchlin, Lorin and Wilbur, all born in Indiana. No middle names in this family – the bishop gave his children distinctive first names.

When I first read a blurb about this book mentioning that the Wright brothers’ father was a minister and they grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing or other conveniences, I thought this was going to be another dysfunctional family where the genius kids somehow make good. Instead, the Wright children lucked out, won the parent lottery. Susan and Milton loved their children, saw them as individuals, and encouraged them to develop their own personalities and intellects. Although Milton was an ordained minister, he encouraged his children to read Robert Ingersoll, an avowed agnostic, to examine their own convictions and come to their own conclusions. After doing so, Orville and Wilbur announced they would not be going to church anymore. Bishop Wright accepted this without one syllable of reproach. He and Katharine continued to attend church on Sunday. The Bishop was also not strict about school attendance. If the children were deeply involved in a book or a project of their own, they were allowed to complete that instead of reporting to the classroom. With that sort of familial environment supporting intellectual curiosity, problem solving, and self-reliance, it makes sense that the boys turned out to be giants in their chosen field of aviation.

Katharine was no slouch, either. She was the only one in the family to get a college degree, after which she returned to Dayton to teach Latin at Steele High School. She was a great assistance to her brothers and her father in many ways and they all supported her pursuit of a college education. In later years, Orville would brag that Katharine had flunked many of the boys who would later become Dayton’s leaders. It was Katharine who kept the home fires burning and supervised the operation of the bicycle shop when the boys started their experiments with gliders at Kitty Hawk. She was communication central when the boys were in one location and Bishop Milton in another.

Although Bishop Wright loved all his children, Wilbur was his clear favorite. He admired his son’s intellect, precision, focus, and sterling character. Everyone in town including his teachers, felt sure Wilbur would be off to Yale after high school graduation. However, there was a horrible accident that altered Wilbur’s life in his senior year. While playing a pick-up game of hockey, he was hit in the face with a hockey stick, causing facial injuries and knocking his upper front teeth. Wilbur suffered excruciating pain for weeks, had to get false teeth and continue to have pain and digestive problems. He stayed for three years, during which time he helped nurse his dying mother and read voraciously.

Orville meanwhile, still in high school, built himself a printing press in the shed in back of the house and printed a neighborhood newspaper. It included poems written by his friend and classmate, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who was to become a substantial influence in African-American literature before dying very young at 33 of alcoholism and tuberculosis.

Around 1890, bicycles were very popular. Physicians wrote articles about the benefits of biking. Though there were those with moral objections, naysayers who saw the devil in those contraptions. Instead of children staying close to home, they could be miles away in a matter of minutes, not paying attention to their books and seductions were transpiring on those bicycle trips to secluded areas, you betcha. Nevertheless, the rage for bicycles continued to grow. The boys opened their bicycle shop on West Third Street in Dayton in 1893 and enjoyed huge success at first. But as more bicycle shops opened in Dayton, business slacked and Wilbur thought about pursuing another career. Eventually, the boys decided to move to another shop which was bigger and starting making their own model of bicycle, available to order.

When Orville contracted typhoid in summer 1896, Wilbur began reading about gliding, inspired by the recent death of German engineer Otto Lilienthal, who expired from a fractured spine after a glider accident. His younger brother often joined him in his gliding experiments. Perhaps this piqued the boys’ interest. Wilbur began reading Lilienthal’s writings aloud to Orville as he recuperated. His past intense interest in birds was rekindled by Lilienthal’s analysis of birds and his effort to duplicate their flying ability.

Orville recuperated. Business remained good. Wilbur continued to learn as much as possible about flight. On May 30, 1899, Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institute and asked for information on publications and articles on the subject of flight, reassuring them that he was not a “crank.” With the list of books and SI pamphlets provided to them, the boys began to study in earnest and that summer began to build a glider in a room above the bicycle shop. By August, they were testing it in an open field. Happy with the results, they were decided to build a man-carrying glider. By the following May, the boys were looking for a place to test their manned machine. It had to a place with no rain or inclement weather and winds of about 15 mph. Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute for advice, who suggested sand hills such as those in South Carolina or Georgia might be a good location. Wilbur had also written to the National Weather Service for information about prevailing winds. After studying that data, the boys decided Kitty Hawk, North Carolina would be the testing site for their manned glider. Thus began a new era in history.

This book is a must-read for history buffs and a delight for anyone who loves an intriguing story. It is full of the Wright brothers’ encounters with other inventors of that time as well as the politics of getting funding for research. Most striking to me was the Wrights’ self-confidence and quiet persistence in overcoming obstacles to satisfying their intellectual curiosity. At that time, most people simply felt man could not fly and should not try. The people of Kitty Hawk initially thought they were crazy, but so did almost everyone else in the country.

David McCullough has given us another masterpiece. Using primary sources including thousands of letters written by the Wright family members to each other and others, diary entries, newspaper and journal articles, he has written a concise history of the men who solved the problem of flight. A mesmerizing tale, to be sure. Included in the book are many photos, as Wilbur had the foresight to bring a camera to Kitty Hawk and subsequently to every flight thereafter.

My rating is 4.75/5.0. This would make a great gift for just about anyone for any occasion.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

This movie is by far one of the best disaster movies to come out in years with a creative plot, great actors and awesome animation techniques. The complexity of the events are complimented with an undeniable sense of suspense despite the security felt with some of the main characters. The biggest reason this movie really caught this authors’ interest is that we never precisely know when the next earthquake or traumatic event is going to happen. Life is unpredictable, and so was this movie. So many scenes in this movie are a must see! When it comes to special effects, it rates a solid 10/10, making it an amazing next generation catastrophe movie that is unlike anything seen before. Hopefully, more films like this will be out in the near future! Starring: The Rock Dwayne Johnson 1 hour 54 minutes PG-13.

Jurassic World

Jurassic world is an extremely suspenseful throw back to the all time favorite film “Jurassic Park” and it definitely does not disappoint. This gripping movie will have you on the edge of your seat whether it is with the terrifying dinosaur chases or a walk through the extensive world and its scenery. The story line is gripping and does a great job of building an understanding for each of the characters. The dinosaurs in this movie are ridiculously real and there are a few new “faces” that would stun Jurassic lovers everywhere! This movie is recommended for anyone who can get a chance to see it! Whether it’s a throwback to the original blockbuster hit, or it’s your first time experiencing a Jurassic movie, you’ll definitely have a great time! Starring: Chris Pratt 2 hours 5 minutes PG-13.

Before you open this book, it would be wise to have a pitcher of lemonade or other favorite iced beverage at hand. Barrows’ description of the West Virginia sizzling summer weather will have you sweltering. Might help to have Miles Davis playing in the background as well.

The time is Summer 1938 (three years after Porgy and Bess debuted). Miss Layla Beck has been shunned by her father, Delaware member of the U.S. Senate, for refusing to marry his choice for her husband. Her pampered sheltered life has ended and she must go “on relief” and work for the WPA Writers Project which conveniently is headed by her Uncle Gray. He appoints her to Macedonia, West Virginia, which is preparing to celebrate its sesquicentennial and has commissioned a written history. Placing her in this “backwater” small town will no doubt bring Layla to her senses and crawling back to her father’s house within a matter of days. It does not.

When she reaches Macedonia, Miss Layla cannot afford a stay at the hotel, so she rooms at the Romeyn home. Her first evening there she wears a white silk dress to dinner. She learns quickly and does not repeat that miscue.

The Romeyns used to be an influential family in the town as their father was the largest employer in town as owner of the hosiery factory. However, the eldest son Felix cast a pall over that legacy and the Romeyns are no longer involved in the factory or in the local “society.” They are a rather odd lot. All good looking and all full of quirks except the youngest Emmett, who teaches at the local high school. Felix is a traveling salesman, gone for weeks at a time, dealing in chemicals. His sister Josephine, Jottie to her family and friends, takes care of the family home and raises Felix’s two daughters, Willa and Bird. Twin sisters Mae and Minerva live at the Romeyn home during the week and go home to their respective husbands on the weekends. After their double wedding years earlier, they learned that they simply could not survive away from each other for more than a few days. Serendipitously, they found mates agreeable to this arrangement. It helps that they are drop-dead gorgeous and have the aura of old money even though they have no money anymore.

We are introduced to this family through the eyes of 12-year-old Willa. Her part of the story is told in the first person. Like most 12-year-olds, she tells it as she sees it. She and 9-year-old Bird (Eudora) visit their mother twice a year. Her parents are divorced but neither has remarried. Mom is living in sin (state of her soul, not the name of the town) a few cities over with her boyfriend. The girls are used to this situation and accept that Jottie, a most beloved aunt to each of them, is their source of maternal love and guidance. Jottie has never married or even “kept company” with anyone since the tragic death almost two decades prior of the young man she loved.

When Miss Layla Beck comes to town to write the history of this little burg, we learn everyone’s story! At first, Willa is wowed by Miss Layla Beck and determines to be her research assistant. When that does not work out, Willa decides to research her own life and all the things that puzzle her. Apparently no one told her to be careful what she asked for. The truth of the downfall of the Romeyn family is told in layers through Willa’s “research,” Miss Layla Beck’s historical research, and Jottie’s memories. The author uses first person observations by Willa, letters by and to Miss Layla Beck, and third person narrative. If you are not a fan of the correspondence format, it is rather minimal and some of the letters are very humorous.

I gave this story a 3.75 because I really hated the ending. Otherwise, it would have a 4.0. The characters are interesting, although not all are likable, humor is spread throughout the story, and the plot’s multilayered reveal kept me interested. This is not The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society quality, but it is still a satisfying read. Even though I did not like the ending, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride there. Don’t forget that pitcher of lemonade.

Available just about everywhere, including Collier County Public Library, in every format including paperback.

Happy 239th Fourth of July to everyone!

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

A horrific scene is encountered by the reader at the very beginning of this latest novel from the prolific Mr. Baldacci. It is the memory of the murder of Amos Decker’s family in their own home – his wife Cassie, almost 10-year-old daughter Molly, and Cassie’s brother Johnny Sacks (is Baldacci a “Sopranos” fan?). Amos remembers coming home from work and finding the grisly scene that destroyed his life. He cannot not remember because he can forget nothing.

For a few brief moments, 22-year-old Amos was a defensive back in the NFL. Then he was slammed by an opponent in a hit so vicious that his brain literally bounced around in his skull. He died twice there on the field, but his team’s head trainer refused to let him go. He was not supposed to survive, but he did. It took months of treatment and rehabilitation, but Amos Decker emerged with an inability to forget anything, and a vocation to be a police officer. He had an overwhelming need to protect and help others.

The inability to forget anything is called hyperthymesia. Amos doesn’t need a To Do List or mnemonics to help him remember the names of the planets, the Seven Dwarves, Santa’s reindeer, or the names of the 43 US Presidents. If he reads it or experiences it, he remembers it forever. The football injury also left him with synesthesia which in his case means that he sees time in pictures, counts in color and sometimes associates color with people or objects. For Amos, death is blue, nine is violet and five is brown, etc. Synesthesia is a benign neurological condition in which people’s cognitive and sensory channels of the brain are not separate, but somehow trigger each other, i.e., a letter or number will evoke a color, smell, feeling, or taste, etc. It is being studied extensively because it has many variations. Mary J. Blige, Billy Joel and Geoffrey Rush are among today’s celebrities who have the condition. Most people who have it were born with it, but it can also be acquired by trauma, as in Amos’ case.

After the introductory scene of Amos’ remembrance of finding his family killed, we next see him in the present, 16 months after that fact. The bank took his house back because he could not make the payments without his wife’s salary, and eventually he left his job as a detective on the Burlington Police force to grieve full-time. He started picking up work as a private investigator. He had no car but used the bus or walked. To say he had “let himself go” would be a gross understatement. The only thing that made him feel at all, even if just for a few minutes, was eating. Baldacci describes his new protagonist: “He was fifty pounds overweight, probably more. Probably a lot more. Six-five and a blimp with bum knees. His gut was soft and pushed out, his arms and chest flabby, his legs two meat sticks. He could no longer see even his overly long feet.”

He is at the breakfast buffet at the Residence Inn where he lives when his ex-partner Mary Lancaster approaches him to explain they have made an arrest in the deaths of his three family members. Someone has walked in and confessed. She promised to keep him updated. Amos decides he needs to talk to this guy in person. Conveniently for him, a shooting has taken place at the city high school, so the police department is stretched thin and he actually pulls off an interview with the confessed killer. Amos is positive the man did not do it.

Thus the story really begins. How could the murders of Amos Decker’s family be related to the high school shooting? Why does someone walk into the police station and confess to a triple murder, which for 16 months had left the cops stymied, at the precise time of a school shooting? Read all about it. Baldacci takes the reader on a raucous roller coaster ride to the conclusion with plenty of his plot twists and character enrichment. Amos Decker’s mind is wondrous to observe. Even though he has an infallible memory, he still has to use his smarts to figure out how events, places and people fit together. The climax of the story near the end when Amos faces off with the bad guys, earns Baldacci a perfect ten for creativity. I have read a lot of mysteries and thrillers in my lifetime, but I have never read a scene like the one served up in Memory Man.

The over-riding theme of this book is release of suffering and healing. The major characters have all experienced psychological and/or physical trauma. The motivations for their actions are based on their need to “even the score” in hopes of finding some peace, quelling their psychological turmoil or just getting revenge. This is a definite change for Baldacci from his usual theme of power, domination and political intrigue.

Memory Man is listed as a standalone, but I doubt it. The final chapter hints heavily that we will see Amos again, along with some of his cohorts. With the huge success this book has had so far, barely two months from publication, it is clear that Baldacci fans love this new character. Amos is a thoroughly decent man with just enough foibles to make him likeable to the rest of us poor humans with our feeble memories. He has, perhaps, an over-developed sense of responsibility. Physically and cognitively he is not the average mystery/suspense hero, but that is exactly what makes him so appealing. With Baldacci’s excellent writing skills and storytelling ability, Amos Decker will be thrilling readers for some time to come.

Rating: 4/5.0. Available in e-format, hardcover and audio format everywhere. Also available at the Collier County Public Library.

Of note: Flannery O’Connor fans, the USPS issued a 93-cent stamp in her honor on June 3. Flag Day is June 14. Have a wonderful Father’s Day on June 21.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

The Marco Players is serving up “A Summer Double Dip” with two romantic comedies, Sylvia and Shooting Star.

Sylvia, by A.R. Gurney, is a romantic comedy about marriage. A suburban couple, Greg (Greg Madera) and Kate (Casey Cobb) have left the suburbs behind and moved to Manhattan after 22 years of child-raising. Greg brings home a stray dog bearing only the name “Sylvia” on her name tag. Greg finds comfort in his relationship with Sylvia (Tracy Lane) as an escape from his job and middle age. Kate sees Sylvia as a rival. After a series of hilarious complications, Sylvia becomes a valued part of their lives.

Sylvia, directed by Greg Madera, is on stage June 11 – 28 at The Marco Players Theater, Marco Town Center Mall at 1089 N. Collier Blvd., Marco Island, FL. Shows are Thursday-Saturday at 8 PM, and Sundays at 2 PM. Tickets are $25 each and are for sale at www.TheMarcoPlayers.com or by calling the box office, (239) 642-7270.

Shooting Star, by Steven Dietz and directed by Greg Madera, is the second dip of romance and comedy. While snowed in all night at a middle-America airport, college lovers Elena Carson and Reed McAllister have an unexpected and life-altering reunion. Elena has stayed true to her hippie-ish, counter-culture path, while Reed has gone predictably corporate and conservative. As the night gives way to laughter and banter, Elena and Reed revisit a past that holds more surprises than they imagined, and a present that neither of them could have predicted. Filled with laughter and ache, Shooting Star is a bittersweet romantic comedy about the middle days of our lives, and how we got there.

To audition for the role of Elena or Reed, call Beverly Dahlstrom, Artistic Director at (239) 404-5198. Private auditions will be scheduled in the theater rehearsal space on Monday and Tuesday, June 29 and 30. Shooting Star will be on stage August 6 – 23, 2015.

The Box Office is open and tickets are currently on sale for the Island Theater Company’s upcoming summer production of “Leading Ladies” sponsored by Jump Hair and Nails and the Island Diet Center.

The ITC Teen Troupe are back and delighted to bring you the hilarious comedy “Leading Ladies” by playwright Ken Ludwig. “Leading Ladies” will run from June 12 through June 20.

Ken Ludwig has had six shows on Broadway, and seven in London’s West End, and his plays and musicals have been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages. His first play on Broadway, “Lend Me a Tenor,” which the Washington Post called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century,” won two Tony Awards and was nominated for seven. He has won two Laurence Olivier Awards, the Charles MacArthur Award, two Helen Hayes Awards, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery from The Mystery Writers of America, the SETC Distinguished Career Award and the Edwin Forrest Award for Services to the American Theatre.

In this hilarious comedy two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania.

When they hear that an old lady in York, PA is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. The trouble is, when they get to York, they find out that the relatives aren’t nephews, but nieces! Romantic entanglements abound, especially when Leo falls head-over-petticoat in love with the old lady’s vivacious niece, Meg, who’s engaged to the local minister. Meg knows that there’s a wide world out there, but it’s not until she meets “Maxine and Stephanie” that she finally gets a taste of it.

The cast of “Leading Ladies” are no strangers to the stage. They have performed in many local productions over the years including “Arsenic & Old Lace,” “A Christmas Story,” “Into the Woods,” “Annie,” “Wicked,” and last season’s “The Odd Couple.” “The cast is grateful for the community support they have received over the years, and hope the community will join them once again for their latest production” says director, Gina Sisbarro-Penzo.

Abby Martin started acting when she was just six years old in the production of “Annie.” Abby is now a graduate of Lely High School. Abby’s most notable performance was Glinda in “Wicked.” Aside from her superb acting, she has the most beautiful voice and can hit those high notes perfectly. Other stellar performances were the roles of Claire in “The Breakfast Club” and Cinderella in “Into the Woods.”

Eddy Ludwidsen is another veteran performer with his first role as the Candyman in “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Not only has he evolved as an actor, he has gotten really, really tall. The inflections in his voice and the ability to take on his characters are performances to take notice of. Eddy will be entering his junior year at M.I.A. High School. Eddy’s notable performances were Brian in “The Breakfast Club,” Mortimer in “Arsenic and Old Lace” and Murray in “The Odd Couple.”

Ryan Sullivan is whom we call the Marty Feldman of his time, with those big, blue, expressive eyes. That’s what landed Ryan in his first role as an Oompa Loompa in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Ryan is our funny man, and has played Ralphie Parke in “A Christmas Story,” Wilbur Turnblad in “Hairspray,” Vinnie in “The Odd Couple,” and most recently the baker in “Into the Woods.” Ryan will be entering as a high school freshman at Marco Island Academy.

Emily Boxma we call “the little girl with the big voice.” She wowed theater audiences in her first showcase as Christine in “Phantom of the Opera,” what she called her dream role of a lifetime, and boy did she earn it. Emily is a great character actor and can take on any challenge. Her notable performances are Grandma Willow in “Pocahontas,” Elaine in “Arsenic and Old Lace” and Jack’s mother in “Into the Woods.” Emily was stage manager for last year’s “Music Man” show. Emily will enter as a high school freshman at Marco Island Academy (MIA).

Cooper Ussery. Amazing and uninhibited best describes this young man. Cooper is another youngster who came alive on stage in his performance as one of the new theater owners in “Phantom of the Opera,” and has landed lead roles since that performance. Cooper has become one of the mentors that our younger actors look up to. Notable performances included the older Ralphie Parker in “A Christmas Story,” Bock in “Wicked” and his brilliant performance as Felix in “The Odd Couple.” Cooper will attend high school in the fall as a freshman.

Alexandra Anderson. This gorgeous young lady is part of the acting Anderson family. She and her siblings have been in theater for years in so many different productions. This is Alexandra’s first break-out role as the lovable and dimwitted Audrey. You have to be very smart to play “that dumb.” Alexandra has risen to the rank of star in this performance. There will be so much more to come from this brilliant young lady. Alexandra will be entering the eighth grade at Marco Island Charter Middle School (MICMS).

Dylan Rogers came to theater last year to help out as a technician. That’s when the magic happened, and he was recognized for his comedic talent and his amazing memorization skills. Although Dylan is new to this company, you may recognize him as Macbeth in this spring’s MIA Shakespearian Festival. As delightfully funny as he is, he has fallen in love with Shakespearian theater and has the ability to perform in the true form of Shakespearian language with depth and zest. Dylan is a graduate of MIA High School.

Jacob Wagner is our newest rookie to the stage. Jacob’s experience has been with his middle school productions at MICMS. It was a wonderful surprise to have Jacob audition for the lovable, bumbling jock Butch. Jacob is a natural, and has added his own little comic twist that the director incorporated into his performance. Jacob has earned his rookie wings, and we look forward to much more from this talented young man. Jacob will be attending Lely High School as a freshman.

“Leading Ladies” opens June 12 and runs weekends through June 20, at the Marco Lutheran Church great room, 525 N. Collier Blvd., Marco Island. Evening performances begin at 7:30 PM. There is one Sunday matinee performance on June 14 at 2:30 PM. Doors open a half-hour prior to performances.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students. Tickets can be purchased in person at Marco Office Supply, 571 Bald Eagle Dr., or Centennial Bank, 615 E. Elkcam Cir. They can also be purchased online at www.theateronmarco.com, by calling the ticket office at 239-394-0080, or at the door 30 minutes prior to each performance.

Group discounts are available! To reserve seats for a group of 10 or more, please call the Box Office at 239-394-0080 to make your reservations.

Opening night tickets include the “Meet the Cast” opening night party following the performance. Additional cast information, show dates and tickets can be found at www.theateronmarco.com. To stay up on all the latest news “Like” their Facebook page at “Island Theater Company.”

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were portrayed by Dylan Rogers and Jessica Lang.

The greed, treachery, betrayal, deceit and drama encapsulated in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” were skillfully and passionately brought to life by students from the Marco Island Academy.

The presentation of one of Shakespeare’s most renowned works graced the stage for five performances recently at the Marco Players’ theater. The play was put on by the Marco Island Shakespeare Festival, marking the third year in which the organization has collaborated with MIA on a production one of the Bard’s masterpieces.

Battle-worn Macbeth, the doomed King Duncan, the conniving Lady Macbeth and prescience of the Wyrd Sisters all sprang from the stage in spirited performances by the youthful cast. Their efforts were warmly received by the audiences that turned out for the shows.

“The model for everything that we do is based on our motto from Konstantin Stanislavsky, who was a Russian actor and director at the Moscow Art Theater, said Jacquielynn Wolff, founding artistic and executive director of the Marco Island Shakespeare Festival. “He said that the purpose of theater is to pierce the human subconscious and act as a looking glass for the audience. That really is the basis for everything that we do.”

“We teach William Shakespeare as [being] one of the world’s greatest humanists,” she added. “We say that if you take any character in a Shakespeare play and you strip away their age, gender, culture, religion, you’re left with a human being. We teach that we all share in the human condition.”

Wolff said that she and Kaitlynn McRae, who directed the production, train the youthful actors to take their experiences with the human condition and infuse them into their character’s dialogue.

“The idea is, these words will go out into the audience and the audience will make their own interpretation and a hundred new meanings might appear,” she said. “What that allows for is the universalism of Shakespeare’s text. That’s why it’s universal, because it can mean something very personal to every single member of the audience.”

McRae praised the cast of 13 for their dedication to mastering the challenging piece.

“They are wonderful people, just as people,” said McRae. “And they are wonderful students and they trust me for reasons that I don’t even understand. They’ve also taught me to trust myself, and I think that’s the greatest gift you can give anyone and I hope that I’ve been able to impart that to them, as well.”

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were portrayed with aplomb by Dylan Rogers and Jessica Lang. They said the roles were indeed challenging, but they could not have been happier with the end result.

“Half the battle is learning what the words mean, so after we mastered that, we could really dive into character dynamics, so we could portray that on stage,” said Lang. “But it’s a process and once we got through the process, it produced this wonderful outcome and I’m really proud of it.”

Rogers described portraying Macbeth as being one of the most intense tasks he’s ever taken on, because of the character’s dynamics, and the amount of time and effort involved.

“It was because, at least for me, acting is connecting and being able to connect with a character like Macbeth is very difficult and we had some very intense moments,” said Rogers, who is currently portraying Leo in the Island Theater Company’s production of ‘Leading Ladies.’ “That’s what it was like. It was intense.”

For Rogers, the highlight of the production occurs in its latter half as Macbeth begins to become unbalanced as the weight of his misdeeds begin to set in.

“Letting go and trying to portray that was a lot of fun, even though it’s really scary at the same time,” said Rogers. “The highlight for me is the last three scenes when I just go all out, you can just do whatever and it works.”

For more information about the Marco Island Shakespeare Festival, visit shakespeareislandstyle.org.

]]>http://www.coastalbreezenews.com/2015/06/11/macbeth-presented-skillfully-by-mia-students-for-mi-shakespeare-festival/feed/0The Price Of Valor: The Life of Audie Murphy, America’s Most Decorated Hero of World War IIhttp://www.coastalbreezenews.com/2015/05/28/the-price-of-valor-the-life-of-audie-murphy-americas-most-decorated-hero-of-world-war-ii/
http://www.coastalbreezenews.com/2015/05/28/the-price-of-valor-the-life-of-audie-murphy-americas-most-decorated-hero-of-world-war-ii/#commentsFri, 29 May 2015 02:12:14 +0000http://www.coastalbreezenews.com/?p=48466BOOK REMARKS
Maggie Gust
winetaster13@gmail.com

By David A. Smith

Regnery History 2015, 256 pages

Genre: Biography

“After the war, they took Army dogs and rehabilitated them for civilian life. But they turned soldiers into civilians immediately and let ‘em sink or swim.” – Attributed to Audie L. Murphy

According to Army records, during the 20 months he served in the European combat theater, Audie L. Murphy was responsible for the elimination of at least 240 enemy soldiers, thus saving an untold number of American lives. He was wounded seriously enough to be hospitalized three times. In return, he received 33 decorations from the United States of America, France and Belgium. Posthumously, the State of Texas granted a special decoration in 2013. Those 33 decorations include the Congressional Medal of Honor. He fought his way from Tunisia to Central Europe via Sicily and Anzio.

He was 17 to 19 years old when he earned those awards. Not the only one to do so, he falsified his birth year to enlist in the military in 1942. His grave marker at Arlington National Cemetery reflects the false birth year of 1924 because that is what the enlistment record indicates. His actual birthdate was June 20, 1925.

In 1941, Audie’s father was long gone, having deserted the family a final time the year before. His mother Josie passed away suddenly a month before his 16th birthday. His older sister Corinne, his second mother, was now married with her own family. Josie instructed them to send their three younger siblings to a local orphans home. Heartbroken, Audie did as his mother asked, but vowed he would put his family back together as soon as possible.

Besides being the year he lost his beloved mother, 1941 was pivotal for Audie in other ways. Lost after his mother’s death and his younger siblings placement in a children’s home, Audie lost himself in work, model airplane building, and “going to the picture show.” There were Westerns aplenty and he enjoyed them, but Gary Cooper’s new movie that year, Sergeant York captured Audie’s heart and mind. York was a real-life hero from the First World War, a poor country boy like Audie, a crack shot with a rifle who could track any living creature for miles. Audie saw the movie twice, and affirmed his own resolve to join the Marines. Maybe his skills would be useful in the war in Europe. Less than two months later, Pearl Harbor was attacked.

At 5 feet 5 inches and 112 pounds, the Marines felt Audie did not meet the criteria to become a sniper. They rejected him several times from December 1941 to May 1942 (their loss as it turns out). Finally, Audie gave up on the Marines and redirected his attention to the Army. He and Corinne went to a notary in their home county of Collin to swear he was born June 20, 1924, and that he had no dependents who needed his financial support. Audie enlisted on June 20, 1942, and reported for training near Fort Worth 10 days later. Because of his small size, he was encouraged to become a cook or some such. He stuck with his determination to become an infantryman. Near the end of training, his commanders were uncertain about sending such a small baby-faced soldier overseas and were intending to find stateside duty for him. He fought for the right to fight and not be commandeered into supply or food service. As a child of the Depression, Audie had been fighting just for survival his entire life, so fighting for his goal of being an infantryman was second nature. But he did look like he belonged in a Boy Scout uniform, not in Army khakis.

February 1943, Audie stepped onto a troop transport for the 11-day trip to Casablanca. Twenty months later, Private Audie Murphy would be commissioned a second lieutenant and recommended for a Congressional Medal of Honor. In Audie’s own words, “If I learned one valuable thing during my early combat days, it was audacity, which is often mistaken for courage or foolishness. It is neither. Audacity is a tactical weapon…throw the enemy off balance and confuse him…If you have no defense, attack.”

He was audacious and he did attack. David A. Smith details those twenty months of Audie’s combat experience in a style that rivets the reader’s attention. Smith uses many primary sources, from Audie’s own letters, speeches and conversations, to interviews with his friends, coworkers and World War II veterans, and military commendations. As I was reading Audie’s exploits, I thought it was a good thing that so many people witnessed his actions, otherwise no one would have believed they happened. To say he had the respect of the men he served with is a gross understatement. As audacious as he was on the battlefield, out of combat, he was his humble unassuming self. One fellow officer is said to have told someone, “Don’t let that baby face fool you, that’s the toughest soldier in the Third Division.”

As you might surmise from the title, “The Price of Valor,” Smith is making a case for Audie being a case study for battle fatigue as it was called in that era, or what we now know as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). He does a convincing job. At the beginning of the war, Audie, most soldiers and even most physicians and psychiatrists, thought battle fatigue was due to a weakness in character or temperament in a certain percentage of those in combat. But during the war, attitudes began to change among the commanding officers, as well as medical personnel. They came to recognize that any soldier was vulnerable to the condition, and that it was external factors not personal deficiency that instigated the PTSD. One commander was even savvy enough to rotate his troops from the front line back for 3-day rest periods.

Audie helped lift the onus of PTSD, and mental illness in general, in the mid-1960s. After his own realization of his addiction to sleeping pills, prescribed by his physician, he rented a hotel room and spent five days withdrawing from them. He never took another pill after that. In order to draw attention to the needs of the Korean War and Vietnam War veterans, he did speak out publicly about the US government’s need to take better care of veterans, and the need to give them benefits for the treatment of PTSD, and other issues. It is now 50 years later – how are we doing with that?

After the war and all the hoopla associated with his homecoming as a Medal of Honor winner, Audie goes to Hollywood via invitation of James Cagney. He did not particularly like actors or pretending, but on the other hand, he needed money. Following through on his self-promise to liberate his three siblings from the orphanage, he used a 1,500 dollar award given to him to buy Corinne a house big enough for her own family plus their three younger siblings. When he boarded that plane, ticket paid for by Cagney, Audie had about 10 dollars to his name. Cagney was good to him, sensed he was worn out and gave Audie a place to live, and horses to ride. When Audie was rested, Cagney sent him to acting lessons.

While in Hollywood, Audie would spend his break time with the crew, mostly gambling. Smith’s theory is that the gambling was Audie’s attempt to recapture the excitement of early combat, to feel “up” about something. Audie himself said he had lost his sense of excitement during the war, and just could not get himself worked up about anything. He never really fit in with Hollywood, at least not the actors and directors, but he did make friends with the stuntmen, grips, extras, etc. At his memorial service in 1971, no actors were there except his first ex-wife Wanda Hendrix and Ann Blyth, but hundreds of stuntmen, extras and crew members paid their respects.

Audie bred horses, was a pilot and owned his own plane. One thing I did not know about him prior to reading this book is that he wrote the lyrics, along with Scott Turner, to about 18 songs and composed a couple himself. Some were popular hits, including “Shutters and Boards” which was recorded by many singers including Dean Martin and Charley Pride. These are on You Tube. Who knew Dino could sing Country?

He made a lot of money, but he gambled a lot of it away. Towards the end of his life, he was under financial duress. He owed the IRS, had lost most of his property, and was looking for way to start again. That is how he came to be in that aircraft when it hit the side of a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia on May 28, 1971. He was on a business trip to check out the possibility of being spokesman for a prefabricated building manufacturer. He was on his way to the factory when the pilot made the fatal error of turning north instead of south to avoid a storm. The plane disintegrated on impact. The bodies of the six men were not found for three days – on Memorial Day, May 31, 1971. The three major TV networks gave Audie’s death a combined total of 90 seconds of airtime.

Audie L. Murphy left a wife and two teenaged sons, as well as some loving siblings back home in Texas. He also left millions of Second World War veterans who respected and admired him. He is buried near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery. His gravesite is the second most visited in the cemetery (JFK’s is number one). They built a little walkway to his resting place so his visitors wouldn’t have to walk on the grass. As the Second World War generation leaves us, one wonders if Audie Murphy’s legacy will fade away as well. His is such a quintessential American story, child of the Depression, dirt poor, picking cotton as a toddler, leaving school with a fifth grade education to find work to feed his mother and siblings, hunting rabbits and squirrels with stones, too poor to own a gun and bullets. Yet never expecting anything but the opportunity to work to better himself, and never letting go of that determination to do so.

The Price of Valor is available in e-format and hardcover at the publisher, Regnery History, as well as the major national book vendors. Collier County Public Library does not have it. David A. Smith is a professor of American History at Baylor University. Rating: 4.0/5.0.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

Adam Price was at the American Legion Hall for the draft of his son’s lacrosse league, at the bar with a Bud in his hand when his world was fractured. The Stranger approached him, telling him that his wife faked her pregnancy and miscarriage two years previously just to get him to stay in their marriage. As proof, he referred Price to verify Visa card charges to “Novelty Funsy.” It might be a good idea to run DNA tests on his two sons to see if they were actually his as well because his wife did lie to him. Twenty years of love and cohabitation with the beautiful woman he loved were instantaneously shadowed by the words of a young man in a baseball cap. Price’s world was altered forever.

After Corinne’s return from a teacher’s conference in Atlantic City, Adam confronts her with the information he has culled from the Visa card records and his digging into the Novelty Funsy site (which is actually fakeapregnancy.com). She promises to tell him more about the situation the next day. However, she disappears from school in the middle of the day, and sends him a text, “Maybe we need some time apart. You take care of the kids. Don’t try to contact me. It will be okay. Just give me a few days. Please.”

Of course that is not possible. The Stranger visits other people and within a few days, two women are tortured and murdered. Adam’s concern about his wife’s lack of communication, especially to their two sons, leads him deeper into the world of modern technology, as well as the nefarious world of real-life criminals. Characteristic of Coben novels, just when the reader thinks she has it figured out, another person arrives on the scene and another incident occurs. They are all parts of the puzzle.

Once again, Coben delivers a great story packed to the hilt with credible characters and plot twists galore. Price is an attorney, his wife Corinne a teacher. They have the ideal suburban New Jersey existence – great house, two great sons, great careers, great friends, great marriage. Yet, one minute with a stranger at a bar throws all this into great question.

The perils of the internet and social media are at the core of The Stranger. The anonymity people are promised or feel at their keyboards while on websites or on social media is a mirage. Some of those sites can be downright dangerous. As with everything else in life, it all comes down to how the individual person utilizes those resources.

The author has taken his familiar New Jersey suburbia, laced it with modern technology and good old-fashioned story lines and plot twists and served up a mighty fine read. Coben fans are sure to not be disappointed. Indeed, no mystery fan could be disappointed by The Stranger. The path to the solution is truly serpentine.

Available at all vendors, including Collier County Public Library. Rating: 4.25/5.0.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

“When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.”– Victor Hugo

Since his earliest memory, Olav Johansen loved making up stories. With the soul of a poet, he seemed born to become a writer. Instead he became a hit man or fixer. When we meet him in late 1976 he has just carried out a “hit” for Daniel Hoffmann, an Oslo crime boss for whom Olav freelances. Pleased with the result, Hoffmann informs him the next assignment is to fix Corina Hoffmann, Daniel’s wife, who is having an affair.

Johansen prepares for the hit by observing the gorgeous Corina in the Hoffmann apartment. This goes on for a few days, as Olav is reluctant to “take out” this female specimen of physical perfection. He watches day after day as a young skinny guy comes every afternoon at 3 p.m., slaps Corina around as foreplay before their session and leaves precisely at 3:45 p.m. After a few days, Olav decides to give Daniel a bonus, follows the skinny guy and fixes him in front of his home. Hoffmann is not pleased – the skinny guy is his only son Benjamin.

So begins the fixer’s flight from one of his best customers. First he rescues Corina, taking her to his home. No one knows where he lives, not even his mother. They will be safe while they make a long-term plan. Then he decides to get a special pizza from his favorite Chinese restaurant to impress Corina, with whom he is now head over heels in love. Things go awry.

Readers familiar with Jo Nesbo need to know this is not one of his Harry Hole mysteries and definitely not one of his children’s books. Blood On Snow is a mesmerizing gritty look at the personal side of a paid killer. A man who tells a small boy witnessing his murdering a person, “I won’t come back and get you but forget what I look like. Okay?” A man who kills another fixer sent to get him and gives that man’s widow the 20 thousand kroner fee he had been promised. A man who is dyslexic but has made reading his main hobby. He reads Les Miserables and rewrites in his mind the parts that Victor Hugo got wrong. He has been in love with a deaf mute named Maria for months, but unable to express that love, then falls into Corina’s arms within days of meeting her. Not your average hit man or at least not your average fictional hit man.

Do not be fooled by its short length – this book is packed full of story. Blood On Snow is beautifully written with fully developed descriptive characters. Flashbacks tell the story of Olav’s chaotic childhood that culminated in his first kill – his father. Probably not to everyone’s taste, this novel is par excellence in its genre, which I would describe as the flip side of Scandinavian noir where the protagonist is usually a detective. My rating: 4.5/5.0. Available at the usual vendors.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.” – Yogi Berra

Well, sports fans, baseball is back! The first few weeks are always glorious because there are no deep disappointments yet and hopes are high. Boston won the World Series in 2013, so why shouldn’t Cubs fans think “Maybe next year” is THIS year? Did Back To The Future 2 writers get it right with “Cubs sweep Miami five games to win 2015?” Maybe so, but the writers, one a Cardinal fan and the other a White Sox fan, were going for a big-time joke, something to startle Marty McFly (and the audience) as he transited to 2015 from 1989. Miami didn’t have a franchise when the movie was made, so half of the writers’ prediction has already come about. We will revisit this idea in October.

In the meanwhile, Seeing Home is the tender story of an authentic baseball fan who surmounted huge obstacles to stay part of the game after an accident left him sightless. It is a perfect read to get any fan back into a baseball frame of mind, packed with anecdotes about baseball’s greats back to the 1940s. It is also a great read for anyone interested in human nature.

At the age of 12, Ed Lucas was playing a pickup game with his Jersey City neighborhood pals when he was struck between the eyes by a ball. Ed had been born prematurely and the oxygen in his incubator was not properly administered, so he incurred damage to his eyes. He had multiple surgeries before his third birthday. His mother was never pleased with his baseball playing because of his precarious visual condition, but she did not forbid it, either. After his accident, and a long recuperation from yet another eye surgery, his parents refused to accept the label of handicapped and conveyed to him that his lack of sight was an inconvenience. Their deep religious faith enabled them to accept reality and look for options that would help their son succeed in life. Their faith was genuine. They prayed as if everything depended on God and worked as if everything depended on them. Ed and his sister Maureen were raised to get on with life – no wallowing allowed.

About half of the book deals with Ed’s early life, up to his first seeing-eye dog Kay, the only female ever admitted to Seton Hall at that time. He does not flinch from describing the rejection and outright insensitivity he encountered in job hunting as a blind person. Even with his degree from Seton Hall and glowing academic and personal references, when he showed up for job interviews, the shock and incredulity were palpable. Finally he found employment seeing insurance policies but simultaneously looked for a way to pursue his interest in broadcasting in baseball.

Ed married a woman named Delilah, had two sons, Ed Jr. and Christopher, with her and came one day to find her waiting with a suitcase for a taxi to take her to a new life. She told him to keep the boys because they would only hold her back from becoming the person she was meant to be. After their divorce, she remarried, had six children and then sued Ed for custody of their sons, then 11 and 13 years old. The judge ruled that a blind man was not fit to have full custody of children and granted him visitation one weekend a month. Nothing was mentioned of the six years that Ed had raised the boys. The judge did not let one of Ed’s many character witnesses speak. When he appealed the decision and the verdict restored full custody to Ed, it was the first time that a disabled person had prevailed over an able-bodied person in such a case.

Seeing Home is a tender, funny, sweet, hopeful story, a perfect read for Spring and the beginning of baseball season. It does get just a little saccharine in spots, but Ed Lucas’ love of life, family, baseball, and his open fun-loving nature are the overarching themes that come through. Ed’s almost life-long relationship with Phil and Cora Rizzuto is covered extensively, secondary only to his parents. I laughed out loud at the witty repartee Ed had with the baseball players throughout the decades of his career. I was surprised at the tenderheartedness of Mickey Mantle, marveled that Joe DiMaggio sat next to Ed and gave him a play-by-play of an entire ball game. It was touching to see the human side of so many celebrities that most of us only see on TV or at the ball park. Ed is the kind of person who in his 60s still had many of his friends from grade school in his life. His “Acknowledgements” section in the book is pages long – he did not want to leave out anyone.

The book will be published on April 21, 2015, but can be pre-ordered and will be available at the major vendors in hardcover and e-book editions. CCPL is currently taking requests. My rating: 4.0/5.0.

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

“This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.” — Winston Churchill

Set against the backdrop of the Second World War in France, The Nightingale is a riveting story of love and family drama. Like All The Light We Cannot See, this book is told from the perspective of civilians, specifically the extremely heroic ordinary Frenchwomen.

By the end of 1940, France was basically a land of women and children. Most of the men of fighting age were dead or in prison camps. When these women sent their men off to war, they were sure that defending the Maginot Line would keep France safe from invasion and the men would be back in a matter of months. Instead, the people of France were betrayed by their own Vichy government, then occupied by the Germans, and the French soldiers sent to prison camps.

The Nightingale is the tale of the Rossignol family, sisters Vianne and Isabelle and their father Julien. After their mother died, Julien deposited his 14-year-old Vianne and 4-year-old Isabelle at the family summer home, Le Jardin, in Carriveau to the care of a harsh housekeeper. Vianne was befriended by local boy Antoine Mauriac, the love of her life, and at age 17, they were married. Her father gave her Le Jardin and never set foot in the house again. Isabelle, always a stubborn independent child, continued her cycle of expulsions from a string of schools. After her final expulsion, she was forced to leave Paris and journey to Le Jardin to live with sister Vianne and niece Sophie. Not a happy prospect for either sister.

At age almost 19, Isabelle is angry, independent, stubborn and a big supporter of Charles DeGaulle, whose radio address to France has inspired her to resist the occupation of her country. The events that occur on Isabelle’s trek from Paris to Carriveau cement her resolve not to knuckle under to the Germans. Vianne is the opposite, happy with her life and a firm believer that the Vichy government is doing the right thing for France. She does not know who Charles DeGaulle is. Meanwhile, father Julien is in his Paris apartment, working for the Nazis during the day and drinking himself to numbness in the evening.

The Nightingale opens with a woman in Oregon organizing her things to leave her home and move into a retirement home at the request of her son, a surgeon. In the attic, she finds old yellowed photos including one of Juliette Gervaise. She is reduced to tears. In subsequent chapters, we learn that the woman in Oregon is one of the Rossignol sisters, but we do not know until the last chapter of the book whether it is Isabelle or Vianne. The woman in the Oregon chapters is written in the first person, and that part of the story is interspersed throughout the book, a device which enables the author to reveal all in the final chapter. Hannah ties up all the loose ends very adeptly in that last chapter.

The title, The Nightingale, relates to the French Resistance member who devised the idea to save Allied pilots by leading them over the Pyrenees to the British consulate in Spain. Rossignol is French for nightingale.

This book is a great read. It is easy to get lost in the story and forget about anything else. Not only is the storytelling masterful with unrelenting new developments, but the character maturation is absolutely superb. Hannah’s characters change in response to the events of their lives in a very credible manner. During the early years of the occupation, the French women who were in the Resistance went undetected because it never occurred to the Germans that women would have the audacity to work against them. In fact, the French Resistance depended greatly on women to help save and repatriate downed Allied pilots. When the Germans started rounding up their Jewish neighbors for “relocation,” it was the women who took in some of those Jewish neighbors, especially their children, and hid then right under the noses of the Nazis.

Hannah really brings home the extreme deprivation civilians experienced in that war. Their clothing and shoes were in tatters, no radios were allowed to keep abreast of the war news (they found ways), no one could be trusted, collaborators were everywhere. There was no medicine, no fuel for heat during the frigid winter, hardly any food, and children died from colds that turned into pneumonia. Nazis billeted themselves in French homes at their will.

It is easy to recommend this book. It is set against the Second World War, but primarily this really is a tale of family and love. Not just romantic love, but all aspects of love. I cannot imagine anyone being disappointed in The Nightingale. I was casting the movie by the end of chapter three. That is my personal yardstick for an engrossing read.

Rating: 4.5/5.0. This book is available everywhere including our local public library.

Happy Passover! Happy Easter!

Maggie Gust has been an avid reader all her life. Her past includes working as a teacher as well as various occupations in the health care field. She shares a hometown with Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, but Florida has been her home since 1993. Genealogy, walking on the beach, reading, movies and writing, are among her pursuits outside of work. She is self employed and works from her Naples home.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a farcical comedy written by William Shakespeare. Directed by John McKerrow, Producing Artistic Director, Shakespeare in Paradise was named “Best New Theater Company in SW Florida”.

Sir John Falstaff (Jim Corsica) conspires to seduce Mrs. Page (Mary Anne McAvoy McKerrow) and Mrs. Ford (Victoria Diebler), the wives of two prominent Windsor citizens. The insanely jealous Mr. Ford (Mark Vanagas) hires Falstaff to reveal her suspected infidelity. With lightning-quick timing and ridiculous disguises and comical antics, the audience is sure to find pleasure in the humiliation of Falstaff and the way the wives dupe both Falstaff and Mr. Ford.

“The Merry Wives of Windsor is arguably the most light-hearted and funny of Shakespeare’s plays. He truly understood the reality of human relationships. The raucous and imperfect interactions between men and women in this battle of the sexes are as entertaining today as they were 400 years ago when Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare’s audiences cried out to see Sir John Falstaff in love, says John McKerrow.”

The Merry Wives of Windsor is on stage April 16 – May 3 at The Marco Players Theater in the Marco Town Center Mall, 1089 N. Collier Blvd. #432, Marco Island, FL. Performances are Thurs-Sat. at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM Tickets ($25 for adults and $10 for students) are on sale at TheMarcoPlayers.com or call 239/642-7270.

For one night only you can hear the country’s greatest one-man tribute show as the Marco Island Historical Society presents “The Voices of Legends” on March 29th at 7 PM in the Rose History Auditorium.

“A show like no other, a can’t miss performance” – said the New York Times, Johnny Tarangelo will feature classic songs in tribute to artists such as Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Vinton, Paul Anka, Tony Bennett, Elvis, Dion, Little Anthony, the Drifters, the Platters and more. A former member of the famous Doo Wop group, the Mystics that had a hit record in “Hushabye”, Johnny has performed at the Apollo Theater, the Beacon Theater, Radio City Music Hall and Carnige Hall.

Why see one tribute performance when you can see them all! Tickets are available at the Museum Gift Store for $25.00 per person. For more information call 239-389-6447.